She Holds the Sun in Her Palm
by selenia-sopheria
Summary: "Can you feel my hand?" Alvin/Leia


It was never really a matter of what she wanted, but what she felt the necessity to do. Per contra, Leia had responsibly held Alvin's hand through nighttides of overthinking so that when he gasped to meet reality in cold sweat, he would feel her touch and find her eyes, green and refreshing.

The first time it happened, it was a few days after she had tagged along with Jude and the others, shortly after they had met. She massaged his shaking calluses, meeting his bewildered eyes with a small, natural smile.

"Breathe slowly," she said. "Can you feel my hand?"

Alvin stared and swallowed, nodding mutely. "Yeah," he rasped.

"Then you're okay."

After he collected himself, the remainder of the night was comprised of blithe conversation, until Alvin made an airy remark about shooing away little girls who desperately needed their beauty sleep, to which Leia retaliated was a far greater necessity to certain little buddies.

This became the norm on sleepless nights. Even so, Alvin protested against her comfort, and there hung the unspoken assertion that he preferred her not to see him in such a vulnerable state, but she, in turn, could not bear to see him in such a pained one.

Though, she would not tell him that his sleepless nights became her sleepless nights, and that her heart moaned and twisted and convulsed whenever she knew, from the room next door, that he was shivering with muted sobs. But she knew he knew this as well.

By the time the bags under her eyes had surfaced, she was pleased to see them vanish under the oblique cover of her makeup.

* * *

In a particular dead of night, Leia found herself slipping into his room, despite the circumstances, and trying for his hand. She held it clumsily; she hadn't held it in a while. Yet she gripped it tightly with cold, shaky fingers, chanting mentally for him to not wake up, to _please don't wake up_ to _please don't wake up_ because—

—she was scared to hold his hand when he was awake.

Her eyes flitted across the scope of the room, freezing inevitably on the cold-skinned metal in the corner that made her remember the searing prick of betrayal in her shoulder, and suddenly her shoulder ached and fell, limp and burning, and she did not miss the abrupt rush of adrenaline in his wrist's beat that signaled he was about to have a nightmare or that—

—he was awake, he was awake.

When her eyes snapped back to him his body was still, unmoving. Tense. It was poignant, the unspoken certainty: neither of them was adequate about the other's presence. She had made a mistake.

"Can you feel my hand?" she asked carefully.

There was no response, and he continued to feign sleep.

* * *

When Alvin was unwatched, he was dangerous, deadly—to himself.

And this midnight was the one that allowed Leia to realize why she could not settle knowing nobody stood by his side at the peak of the eventide.

The gun slid across the cold ground, tumbling precisely before her boots. She stared at it, wide-eyed and reluctant. The face of the moonlight shone along the metal's skin—taunting. Inviting. Terrifying.

The night air stunk.

"Go ahead," Alvin said wearily. "I was planning to do it myself, but since you're here, I figure I'd give you the honors."

His words were fire, cunningly provoking, like a soreness in her heart. It hoaxed her into taking the weapon into her hands; the icy steel stung against her shaky, unwilling touch. The gun frightened her, coaxed her. The gun gave her an idea.

With wild, fearful eyes, she stared right into the barrel, the corner of her eye catching Alvin's cautionary step forward.

"Hey," he warned. "You understood what I meant by that, right?" He sounded apprehensive.

"I understood," she said, her voice high and stiff.

"Leia, put it down. If you don't know how to use—"

A sharp _bang_ shattered the air and her eardrums. She shot the moon.

"God_dammit_, Leia, I'm _warning_ you—"

"This is what you do to me, Alvin," she whimpered, shakily containing the hellion in her hands. She felt tears gather around the corner of her eyes. "Every time you try to pull off something as stupid as this, I get just as scared as you are right now!"

Alvin's eyes were wide with delirium, as unsettling as her heartbeat. "Okay! Okay," he submitted, hastily and desperately. Heaving an unstable sigh, he shuddered and slowly backed away with his hands raised, as if the gun was pointed at him. "I promise I won't," he said.

Just as slowly, Leia lowered the weapon before she could break into banshee.

* * *

Leia had not spoken to Alvin for weeks, and it was not until he approached her one daybreak that she was forced to face him. For a split-second her heart clutched to her emotions and dropped, petrified. (She had to coax it into believing Alvin meant no malice, Alvin was her friend, Alvin was—trustworthy. She also had to coax herself into believing she was not lying.) She did not make a move until he did, until he offered her a crooked grin to massage the air before it was full of tension.

"Listen," he began, ruffling the back of his head. "I need to talk to you."

"Sure… What about?" She scorned herself for how timid she sounded.

"Me. Us," he sighed. "Am I as woebegone as I make myself out to be?"

"No," she said immediately. She paused, contemplating, and said again, with more certainty, "No."

Alvin meant no malice, Alvin was her friend, Alvin was trustworthy.

Do you hear that?

If Alvin could just forgive and believe in himself, then he would not pose a threat to anybody—not even to himself.

"And how do you know?"

Leia felt her smile reach her eyes, sunny and refreshing. With a relaxed hand and a hold that was green and natural, she reached forward and caught his stiff hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

"Can you feel my hand?"

Alvin blinked at her, and then nodded once, a dream of a smile settling rugged on his features.

"Yeah. I can."

"Then," she said, rubbing warmth back into the frigidness of his hand, "you're okay."

He would be okay.

He would be okay.

With her guidance and comfort and hand, he would be okay.

* * *

**Ugh! I think this is disgusting, and by disgusting I mean—**_**bad**_**. I don't know. I think I just disgraced this pairing because of how messily I wrote this. I was never good with these genres.**


End file.
